Tuesday 29 January 2013 09.35 EST
First published on Tuesday 29 January 2013 09.35 EST

If you're a male student on campus at Liverpool Hope, Bath Spa or Cumbria University, you may be feeling a little outnumbered. These are some of the 20 institutions where there are twice as many female fulltime undergraduates as there are male, according to Higher Education Statistics Authority (Hesa) data.

• Flick between the tabs on the interactive graphic below to view a gender breakdown at institution and subject level, as well as an overview of subject changes over the past five years

How many males and females are on my campus?The gender make-up of each university is influenced by the type of subjects on offer. Imperial College London, for example, – a science, engineering, medicine and business institution – is one of two institutions where men count for two thirds of the undergraduate intake. Universities specialising in art and design courses are particularly dominated by females. Generally speaking, the intake at many of the Russell Group universities is more evenly balanced – at Oxford and Cambridge, there are slightly more males than females.

What subjects are males and females studying at university?The sheer number of female students means that they outnumber boys on the majority of courses, but those most dominated by women include veterinary science and subjects allied to medicine and education. Men outnumber women on computer science and engineering and technology, according the number of students graduating last year.

A glance at statistics for the past five years shows that in some subject areas, gender differences have widened. Most stark is the 52% increase in the number of women studying veterinary science – accompanied by a 4% drop in the number of men taking the subject. The difference in the numbers of men and women studying computer science also widened.

Why is there a gender gap at universities?It's unclear why certain subjects attract more women than men (or vice versa), says Claire Callender, professor of higher education studies at the Institute of Education. "It's largely associated with what happens in schools. One of the key predictors of what someone will study is what they did at A-level. There have been lots of attempts to encourage girls to study Stem subjects."

Fewer programmes have focused on getting more men into higher education. Educationalists say the underrepresentation of male university students is down to attainment patterns in schools: girls outperform boys and are more likely to stay on at sixth form. But the reasons behind this could be cultural, says Bahram Bekhradnia, director of the Higher Education Policy Institute.

"It's probably down to cultural reasons. The change was first noticed around the introduction of GCSEs and the move towards more continuous assessment and coursework in schools, though there's no evidence that this is the cause of the gender differences. This is an international phenomenon, it's not restricted to the UK."